1. Field of the Invention
This invention, as expressed in the heading of this descriptive memorandum, consists of a remote controlled aircraft designed to transport equipment, that takes off and lands like a helicopter and can fly like an airplane in horizontal flight, being able to land accurately on a small area.
The possibility of installing different equipment in the invention enables it to be used in many civilian and military missions, such as those of traffic control, search for forest fires or faults in oil pipelines or electric power lines, surveillance of coasts and borders, correction of artillery fire, detection and blinding of enemy radars, localization of targets, etc.
Therefore, the invention can fly both like an airplane or a helicopter, this not only at take-off and landing, but also in any other circumstance that may require its immobility above or near the objective to be observed, surveyed or attacked.
2. Background of the Prior Art
Since the mid-40's and until the present day, there have been many attempts to build aircraft which, while being able to take-off and land vertically, could also fly like airplanes with lift produced by more or less conventional wings, in order to achieve a higher flying velocity with a lower fuel consumption than helicopters and thus longer flight time and a wider radius of operation.
In the first attempts, take-offs and landings were carried out with the fuselage of the aircraft in a vertical position and the transition to flying like an airplane was done by rotation of the unit itself until the fuselage reached a horizontal position.
Among these attempts we may point out those related to the use of turboshaft motors driving counterrotating propellers long enough (in diameter) to sustain the aircraft in a vertical position during take-off and landing, providing the thrust needed for horizontal flight. With this method they managed relatively reasonable take-offs, but not very satisfactory landings, due on the one hand, to the poor visibility of the ground the pilot had when the fuselage was in a vertical position, and on the other hand, to the lack of capability of the propellers providing lift to supply control as compared to that of a conventional rotor.
After these attempts and some others which used jets with enough thrust to sustain the plane during take-off and landing, changes led to the idea of performing these maneuvers with the plane in the normal position for horizontal flight, by either using different systems to provide lift at take-off and landing (rotors or jets) from the ones used to provide thrust in horizontal flight; or else not rotating the whole aircraft to perform the transition from vertical to horizontal flight, but only certain parts of the aircraft, such as the motors themselves, or the jets head pipes, or the rotor axes, which provide alternately, depending on their position, lift for take-off and landing or thrust in horizontal flight.
The idea of using different systems to provide lift and thrust does not only make the product more expensive, but also reduces the payload. This is why, quite often, combined methods have been used in which the parts which provide lift during take-off and landing also cooperate in horizontal flight with those other parts which provide the thrust.
As for the method of rotating certain parts of the plane, such as the motors, rotors or head pipes, it is thought that the more relatively important the moving parts are, the more expensive, heavier and prone to failures the solution will be.
As confirmation of the above-mentioned, we have the fact that in specific reference to existing unmanned vertical take-off and landing aircraft, there are now several types in use with two coaxial rotors, which act as helicopters both at take-off and landing and during flight and an aircraft is nearing the end of its development now, which has two rotors set at the ends of its fixed wing which are driven via mechanical transmissions from a central motor and which, as we said when talking about manned aircraft, can provide lift with their axes in a vertical position and thrust if they are rotated to a horizontal position.